Just downright painful how tone deaf these guys are:
A state senator who floated the idea of commemorating Utah’s most famous gun maker with a state holiday on the same date as that honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said he’ll seek another date because of backlash he faced this week.
Instead, Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, said he’ll ask veterans’ groups if they would like to share either Veterans Day or Memorial Day, and will ask the LDS Church if it’s appropriate to share the July 24 Pioneer Day state holiday with the late Ogden gun inventor John M. Browning.
Madsen said he had never officially chosen Martin Luther King Day — the third Monday in January — for his legislation, but considered it because it falls near Browning’s birthday. He blamed media reports of the idea for derailing it before he had a chance to talk with black leaders.
“I kind of stumbled into racial politics,” Madsen said, insisting he meant no slight to King.
The legislation, which Madsen still is drafting, would piggyback on another holiday to avoid costing the state a day of lost work.
The Salt Lake chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People roundly rejected any joint holiday for King, and particularly objected to one with a gun maker.
“Dr. King was assassinated, and he was assassinated with a gun,” said Jeanetta Williams, NAACP chapter president.
***“Certainly there was a shot that killed Dr. King,” Madsen said. “On the other hand, there’s been many shots fired from Browning firearms that have saved tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands — of American lives.”
It is worth remembering that as awful as the national Republicans are, the local ones- the ones you live with- are even worse. Also in Utah news, my favorite Republican in the world, Chris Buttars, has some new legislation– getting rid of 12th grade to save money.
Obligatory Chris Buttars quote:
Buttars doesn’t disregard evolution completely, rather he believes God is the creator, but His creations have evolved within their own species.
“We get different types of dogs and different types of cats, but you have never seen a ‘dat,’ ‘’ he said.
I guess if you got rid of every science class and replaced the lectures with a note card that says “Because God says so,” you could probably get everyone out of high school by the end of ninth grade. Even with a couple days off every year for MLK/Browning Day.
General Winfield Stuck
It is worth remembering that as awful as the national Republicans are, the local ones- the ones you live with- are even worse
Like Bill Moyers once said. You think the politicians are bad, you should see their constituents. We forget that at our own peril.
mr. whipple
You got turtles and doves AND turtle doves.
Take that, Mr. Buttars.
darryl
I teach in some very …challenging….classes, and letting the wingnuts have their way would certainly make my life easier. I’d just sit in the back reading a magazine and saying “Jesus.” anytime any kid asked me why anything was anything.
Mark S.
I love how disbelieving extra-species evolution is the third way of conservative intellectualism.
My favorite creationist argument, though, is that evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Tax Analyst
“dat” is some seriously dumb shit.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t & refix’t. ;)
DonBoy
Look, if MLK had been armed, he would have been
shot years earlier by some redneck cop who figured he must be about to rob a bankable to defend himself.Omnes Omnibus
@Tax Analyst: Buttars is a “cog” in the wingnut machine though.
Brazil is Big
I just signed my kid up for Science Camp for this summer as I hope to balance out some fundie kid going to Vacation Bible School. Just trying to do my part, I guess.
darryl
Butters probably doesn’t know it, but this is not necessarily a bad idea. Many, many students waste most or all of Senior year.
I don’t have much of a strong opinion either way. The only strong opinion I have as a teacher is that schools should evict for bad behavior a little faster/earlier. 2 or 3 bad kids in a room can wreck the entire class, every day.
The cone of ignorance is real. It’s not just a joke. One bad kid can bring down the grades of everybody sitting within a desk or two.
Another opinion I’ve formed being a teacher is that education isn’t for everyone. Trying to force everybody through the system, regardless of interest or learning disabilities, besides wasting people’s time, has cheapened the high school diploma. It’s now almost meaningless, thanks to a long period of ….I don’t know what you’d call it….Credential Inflation or something.
me
You know what would save more money? Eliminating public education! After all, there’s nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing the right to an education and poor people don’t need to learn how to read to do manual labor.
mai naem
This is a mormon thing. I don’t mean to generalize but don’t forget mormons’ theology said blacks were the children of the devil or whatever until the late 70s. A lot of them still think that.
Kyle
We’ve got dumb, and ass, and apparently in Utah plenty of dumbass.
Omnes Omnibus
@me:
I’m sure this has been advanced as a plan by some idiot.
darryl
@Mark S.:
Have you ever met anyone who disbelieves evolution who understands what the theory itself says?
freelancer (itouch)
@Mark S.:
Creationist almost discovers the sun.
http://clarkblog.typepad.com/clarkblog/2005/11/creationist_alm.html
mr. whipple
If you mate the offspring of a dog and a cat with a horned owl, you get a who dat.
Tax Analyst
@Omnes Omnibus:
But “dumb” is still “dumb” and “shit” is still “shit”. Wingnut cogs are pretty much dumbshits by definition.
I figure the more dumb shit you have in your machine, the more it stinks. But that doesn’t mean people won’t vote for them.
Jeff Fecke
Right. Like they’ll let some nobody like King share in the glory that is Browning Day.
Tax Analyst
@mr. whipple:
That struck me as very funny.
a “who dat”…heh.
wasabi gasp
Because they’re shy, like God.
Tax Analyst
Anne Boleyn/Gillette Razor Day
The possibilities are nearly endless.
Kryptik
Someone showed Butters the Crocoduck, didn’t he?
Bad Horse's Filly
This reminds me of a class I took in college. In order to get our degrees, we had to take a lighting design class. The prof realized there were many of us who weren’t exactly technical geniuses, so he offered what was basically a remedial class.
One day, after we bombarded him with stupid questions about basic electrical circuitry, he stopped, took a deep breath and said in complete exasperation:
Look, when God said let there be light, a lot of things fell in to place!
I still wonder if anyone used that answer on the final.
valdivia
@mr. whipple:
FTW.
Tax Analyst
@wasabi gasp:
I think one was spotted on Thomas Friedman’s property.
A spotted ‘dat’…very rare.
jenniebee
You know, we focus mostly on national politics and elections, but if liberals don’t start making an effort to take back local school boards (and the county apparati that fund them) around the country, we are doomed to an uphill fight nationwide for generations. We need to stop ceding the fights on textbooks, on zero-tolerance policies that lead to strip searches in search for over the counter pain killers, on the green-lighting of using laptop computers issued to students as surveillance devices, and we need to do it before we grow a generation of Americans who accept the surveillance state as normal.
rikyrah
they are who we think they are. nothing surprises me with these clowns.
Brian J
Meanwhile, Megan McArdle continues to be a hack. (I’m not sure if this or something like it has been posted already, but if not, it’s a nice read.) Money quote:
I try to be charitable to people, but there’s clearly a point at which it becomes obvious that a person is out of their depth or simply being a hack. Or maybe both.
mr. whipple
@jenniebee:
Amen. I mean, I agree.
UnkyT
@mai naem: I don’t think it is so much a theological thing so much as a cultural thing. I live in a Salt Lake suburb and see a black person maybe once a week. There just isn’t an African-American population to speak of in Utah, and as such they are ignorant and insensitive to all things African-American. Not excusing it, just saying that out of state Mormons do not show this kind of insensitivity.
Also, Buttars. Bastard is my local Senator and lives about a mile from my home. Constant embarrassment.
cat48
Yes, the local ones are really bad. In SC where I’m living for a few yrs, a state legislator wants to get rid of paper money and just use gold and silver coins. Totally idiotic! Can’t wait to carry around a bag full of coins! ATM??
Then you have a new fad in VA & TX; their govs. are suing the EPA because they are going to cap emissions and disagree with scientists who say that it is harmful to our health now. They want more proof.
Also VA gov. repealed nondiscrimination law for gays this week. LOCAL YOKELS ALL.
/rant
MikeTheZ
This is right up there with Bob McDonell, VA’s new idiot Governor deciding that in the midst of 10% unemployment he should lead the business community by example…by removing protections for gays and lesbians from being fired from state jobs for being homosexual.
Gotta love the people who elect these wingnuts.
Citizen_X
Ah, but we have all heard of the turducken, yes, Senator Buttahhhs?
MikeTheZ
@cat48: Beat me to it. And remembered the EPA thing. McDonell said it was “In the best interests of all Virginians.” Um, yeah, I’m sure the people on the coast and near the rivers will thank him when they get flooded out.
rob!
With guys like Buttars in our government, we really are headed towards the whole Eloi/Morlock set-up from The Time Machine.
Eric U.
@Mark S.: one of my most hated professors kept being cited by Jerry Falwell’s followers as having proven that the earth was 12000 years old using second law arguments. The funny thing was, his specialty was automotive suspensions.
Mike E
I grew up in the PA 7th CD where no Democrat held that seat since Lincoln, until Watergate–Bob Edgar was the beneficiary of voter backlash/apathy, and he served for a dozen years until he ran against some guy named Specter.
Being a Dem in such a GOP stronghold sucked, but now it’s a solid blue district. Almost makes me feel that if you live long enough you’ll see this kind of a turnaround in any ol’ district. If we don’t see Costner’s Postman happen 1st.
cat48
Another idiot, Jeffrey Rosen, New Republic, GWU, has an oped in Suns. WP advising Obama he would be perfect as a Supreme Court Justice since he is too cool, detached, professorial, etc. to be president, some say so he should nominate himself or make a deal w/Hillary that she will nominate him when she is president. Is he a PUMA?
I was too angry to concentrate to read it carefully, but where does this asshole get off? I guess it is not enough he nearly derailed Sotomayor’s nomination with his hit job column in the NR, now he has to insult my president, too.
He’s the bastard who said she was combative and “a wise Latina”. I guess it might be a concerted effort by Hiatt to drive Obama completely over the edge. He’s doing a good job of raising my blood pressure!
Mark S.
@freelancer (itouch):
That was pretty funny. I also wonder how they reconcile growing from a zygote to an adult with the 2nd Law.
aarrgghh
it’s not tone deafness. the guy’s just being a dick and knows it. the tell is:
just a dick. plenty of those types too in the gop.
Bubblegum Tate
@Mark S.:
I was convinced for a while that the above argument was a way for a spoof to tip people off that he was a spoof. I should’ve known better.
And now, a screen grab from Family Guy that’ll make Sarah Palin cry for at least two reasons.
JAHILL10
@ cat48
I am with you. This whole Obama is too intelligent to be president schtick is getting old. We just had a shoot first from the hip/gut/whatever, ask questions never president who was a freakin’ DISASTER. Now people what him or someone like him back?
Perhaps this is just a different expression of the Maureen Dowd “I want my president to be my Daddy” issue. Do these “Obama is too smart and cerebral” people have some issues of their own that need working out?
Zam
@freelancer (itouch): That has to be a spoof, I mean they can’t be that stupid can they?
Martin
So, 10% unemployment and the politicians want to turn out 4.5 million 17 year-olds prematurely into the job market. Or do they think the massively underfunded (and unfunded, if the GOP had their way) university systems can take them all?
Great plan, guys.
mr. whipple
Looks like Johnny Weir had his aura aligned tonight.
Zam
@Martin: Don’t forget the inevitable firings of teachers, and sadly it will likely only be those new to their job and not the shitty ones like I guarantee the cons will insist are gonna get the axe.
FlipYrWhig
What the fuck does that “dat” line even mean? There can’t be such a thing as evolution because species don’t randomly merge? Or is he trying to make some kind of weird-ass analogy that humans and apes can’t have come from a common ancestor because he’s never seen a “hupe”? I mean, just, what the fuck?
Brian J
@cat48:
Why would he event nominate himself now? He’s young enough that he could serve two full terms and then still sit on the Court for at least ten years.
Martin
@FlipYrWhig: Remember Bush’s SOTU promise to ban human/animal hybrids? They really do think you can make a ‘hupe’ just by pulling out a microscope and some Barry White.
Martin
@Zam: You must be new here.
Brian J
@Martin:
You joke, but I don’t see any human/animal hybrids running around. At least Bush has that accomplishment under his belt.
Martin
@Brian J: Oh yeah, what about the Sarahcuda?
TenguPhule
I would argue that the current GOP is a successful crossbreed of anal cysts and dung beetles.
And our current crop of Democratic Senators feature an alarming number of jellyfish-dicks.
Chris
The best part is that there probably was a “dat” as cats and dogs evolved from the same ancestor.
Mako
Twelfth grade is a waste.
All american high school students should be required to spend their twelfth school year digging latrines in third world countries.
There will be testing and your gpa depends onit.
darryl
That’s the problem. A dog cat hybrid wouldn’t make sense according to evolutionary theory. But this idiot thinks the lack of that is an argument against evolution. Because he has no clue how evolution actually works. I had a guy tell me one time that evolution isn’t true because his dog was never going to magically turn into a donkey.
Education or not, the simple fact is there are people who can’t understand some complicated things. I know this personally because I had 3 senior-college-level Quantum Physics classes and I honestly can’t understand Quantum Physics and how to use it. Sadly, my brain has limits and I ran into those limits. Unfortunately, a lot of peoples’ limits are around 8th-grade science. A very lot of people. And then they turn 18 and begin a lifetime of voting Republican.
Anne Laurie
@me:
My glibertarian neighbors in New Hampshire are all over this
rationalizationtheory! After all, if education is valuable, then people will pay for it out of their own pockets. And if they can’t pay for it, then — well, at that point the mumbling tends to divide between “private charity is better than public welfare” and “somebody has to clean the toilets, as long as it’s not me or my kids.”. The fact that many of the selfish basturds got their own degrees on the public dime just proves that they’re smarter and worthier than the average trailer-park denizen, because shut up, that’s why.Anne Laurie
@Brian J:
McArdle would point out that she’s getting paid to write lies and bullshite for a serious national magazine, while you’re posting to a blog for free. By glibertarian standards, this proves that McArdle is better than you, or me for that matter. And once you’ve assimilated that frame of reference, you know all you will ever need to know about glibertarians in general and McArdle in particular.
Martin
@Anne Laurie:
I guess nothing can be valuable to society, only individuals, eh? I’ve always thought we should just wait for those people to go down to the basement for something and lock them down there. If the individual perspective is the only worthwhile one, it seems that walling them off is a win-win. After all, their contribution to society isn’t even worth measuring.
asiangrrlMN
Pew pew! Pew pew! Sorry. I got nothing to say to this asshat. And, yes, local Republicans fucking suck. See, Ratface Pawlenty as evidence.
West of the Cascades
@FlipYrWhig: he’s making the point that animals from different species can’t procreate, and thereby undermining the entire theory of evolution.
And, of course, he’s right – I mean, you’ve seen different types of horses and different types of donkeys, but you’ve never seen a honkey or a dorse, have you?
You may however, have seen a mule. D’oh! Ever notice how much Chris Buttars face looks like mule’s ass?
Tax Analyst
@Martin:
That’s a novel idea that seems worth pursuing, Martin. Very cost effective. The biggest expense might be sound-proofing the walls so we don’t have to listen to their constant whining all the time.
Va Highlander
John,
If you come up with a sure-fire method of forgetting about my local Republicans, one that doesn’t involve firearms or more than a fifth of liquor, then please let me know.
I am drowning in a sea of crazy crackers, most of whom are either my blood relatives or otherwise people I’ve known for decades, if not my entire life.
How, I don’t know, but I swear it’s worse now than it was during the darkest days of the Cheney era. They’re going bug-fuck insane and they are determined to take the rest of us with them unless we bow to their demands and throw teh darkie-in-chief out of their White House.
chopper
(headslap). dogg, just walk away. walk away.
uila
I’d like to propose a holiday honoring Pontius Pilate on December 25, any Utah state legislators out there care to take me up?
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History is currently running an exhibit on evolution. Good stuff! There is a nice little movie that runs on a loop. It pretty much bypasses any discussion about humans and apes and gets right down to it – we evolved from a prehistoric mole rat. That sounds about right.
kommrade reproductive vigor
All two members.
Ash Can
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
And after they’ve gotten enough sun.
jibeaux
Chris Buttars is just relieved that no unholy hybrid abominations result from his affections foisted on sheep, and feels the need to give gratitude to someone for that fact.
Da Bomb
This shit is hilarious. The whole thread is filled with fucking win!!!
Local republicans are filled with turds. I should know, I live in Texas. All of these bastards here are turdy.
All of these are FTW.
@mr. whipple: LOL!
JohnR
@darryl:
Exactly! And the school’s response is for the teacher to “engage” the students more. The problem is, that the troublesome students, who need the most attention, succeed in sucking up the attention that the teacher would otherwise be giving to the other 38 or so students. In an ideal world there would be a teacher’s aide who could work only with the two or three problem kids in each class, or else the problem kids could all be consolidated into a class run by the most experienced, skilled teacher available. I learned in the scouts that the most troublesome kids were often the best potential leaders, but they needed extra training to get their attention.
Frank Chow
Did he put on his magic spectacles and talk to Mormon Jeebus? That’s normally how key decisions like this are made in Utah.
Tonybrown74
@Tax Analyst:
You owe me an iMac.
LOL!